Vegard Stikbakke

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Books I read in 2022

I read 14 books this year, spanning 5878 pages. Not too bad with two kids of 0 and 2 years.

I’m trying something new this year, so instead of just listing out the books I’m also going to group them and say something about them. As always, those in bold were my favourites.

  • Master of the Senate (2002) by Robert Caro
  • The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985 - 1993 (2011) Jordan Mechner
  • The Passage of Power (2012) by Robert Caro
  • The Founders: The Story of Paypal (2022) by Jimmy Soni
  • Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (2021) by Bryar and Carr
  • The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley (1985) by Michael Malone
  • Kotlin in Action (2016) by Jemerov and Isakova
  • Moneyball (2003) by Michael Lewis
  • The Mythical Man Month (1975) by Fred Brooks (reread)
  • The Big Short (2010) by Michael Lewis
  • The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 (1983) by William Manchester
  • How Query Engines Work (2022) Andy Grove
  • Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021) by Michael Lewis

Biographies

  • Master of the Senate (2002) by Robert Caro
  • The Passage of Power (2012) by Robert Caro
  • The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 (1983) by William Manchester

My first and only big reads this year were book 3 and 4 of Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson. I just can’t recommend this series enough! Caro has done an unbelievable amount of research, and his writing is very engaging.

Master of the Senate (spanning 1167 pages!) was somehow simultaneously a description of how the Senate works and a page turner. It’s an excellent drama on how Johnson ascended to the role of Senate majority leader, and uses that power to incredible gain, passing among others a landmark civil rights bill. Learned a lot about how legislation in the US works, too.

In The Passage of Power, Johnson joins JFK as his vice president, Kennedy is assassinated, and Johnson takes power as president (this is his life-long dream!). It ends a few months after he came to power, in which time he had accomplished a lot already. My favorite thing to come out of this was getting a more nuanced view of JFK. He was not as likable as I thought: Far more cynical. But also incredibly courageous.

I also read another biography about a politician: The Last Lion 1 about Churchill. What a remarkable man. Listened to this on 2x on audiobook while painting the house, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I’d sat down and read it. But wow, Churchill was impressive. For example, he spent multiple stints as a war correspondent. During the Boer War in South Africa he was captured as a prisoner of war and makes an escape that’s straight out of a movie. And he was hilarious. I laughed out loud many times. I’m hoping to read The Last Lion book 2 this year.

Silicon Valley history

As always, I read some Silicon Valley history. This is probably the biggest theme going through my reading in previous years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

  • The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley (1985) by Michael Malone. Written in 1985, so it’s one of the books written during the birth of Silicon Valley as we know it. It’s based on the author’s interviews from his time as a tech reporter. Iconoclastic founders have been a staple of Silicon Valley since the beginning!
  • The Founders: The Story of Paypal (2022) by Jimmy Soni. Highly enjoyable. The PayPal mafia is well known, so it was fun to read the origin story. Particularly interesting topics: The merger with X.com (Elon Musk’s site) and Musk subsequently proposing a rewrite of the entire PayPal codebase; Max Levchin (now CEO of Affirm) fighting fraud.
  • Kotlin in Action (2016) by Jemerov and Isakova. I started writing Kotlin at work, and reading this was a boon to my productivity.
  • The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975) by Fred Brooks (reread). A foundational text in software engineering management. The list of ideas presented is long, and if you’re a software engineer, you’re bound to have heard some. E.g. Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Highly recommended for anyone in software.
  • How Query Engines Work (2022) Andy Grove. I’ve become interested in databases recently. This was a quick read about, well, how query engines work, in particular query planning. Grove (not that Andy Grove) started the DataFusion query engine project that is now part of Apache Arrow. The book has a fairly low level of detail, which is good for an overview, but the book felt a bit incomplete. Turns out the book is still in progress and available online, so I would recommend reading there.

Michael Lewis books

I rewatched both The Big Short and Moneyball this year, and was inspired to read the books behind the movies. I’ve read other things by Lewis before, and his writing is interesting and easy to read.

  • Moneyball (2003) by Michael Lewis
  • The Big Short (2010) by Michael Lewis
  • The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021) by Michael Lewis. About the Covid pandemic, and one big takeaway from that is how badly CDC was set up to handle it. Bad incentives all around.

Other non fiction

  • The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985 - 1993 (2011) Jordan Mechner
  • Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (2021) by Bryar and Carr. Amazon’s six pager memos are well known by now, and has inspired a culture of design docs in software companies. This book describes that and other interesting Amazon management things.

Fiction

I only finished one novel in 2022. I also started Kafka’s The Trial, but it was too frustrating!

  • Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro. Thought provoking and sad.

Got any recommendations? Hit me up!